PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT OF THE LARK ELLEN AGED CARE, 133 JANNALI AVENUE, SUTHERLAND HERITAGE IMPACT STATEMENT Prepared by: John Oultram Heritage & Design Level 2, 386 New South Head Road, Double Bay, NSW 2028 T: (02) 9327 2748 E: [email protected] Prepared for: Lark Ellen Aged Care May 2017 © John Oultram Heritage & Design LARK ELLEN NURSING HOME, SUTHERLAND HERITAGE IMPACT STATEMENT ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 1.0 INTRODUCTION 1.1 THE BRIEF The following report has been prepared to accompany a development application for the development of the Lark Ellen Aged Care facility at 133 Jannali Avenue, Sutherland, NSW. The report has been prepared on behalf of Lark Ellen Aged Care, the owners and operators of the facility. 1.2 THE STUDY AREA The study area is Lots 24, 25 & 28 in DP 9306 (Lark Ellen Aged Care) and three residential properties to the south in Lots 14, 20 and 21 in DP 9306 (Figure 1.1). LARK ELLEN AGED CARE Figure 1.1 The Study Area - 133 Jannali Avenue, Sutherland Source: Google Maps 1.3 LIMITATIONS AND TERMS The report only addresses the European significance of the place. The terms fabric, conservation, maintenance, preservation, restoration, reconstruction, adaptation, compatible use and cultural significance used in this report are as defined in the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter. JOHN OULTRAM HERITAGE & DESIGN 2 LARK ELLEN NURSING HOME, SUTHERLAND HERITAGE IMPACT STATEMENT ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 1.4 METHODOLOGY This report was prepared in accordance with the NSW Heritage Manual “Statements of Heritage Impact”, “Assessing Heritage Significance Guidelines” and the Sutherland Shire Council guidelines for the preparation of heritage impact statements.. The philosophy adopted is that guided by the Australia ICOMOS Burra Charter 1999. 1.5 AUTHORS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This report, including all diagrams and photographs, was prepared by John Oultram of John Oultram Heritage & Design, unless otherwise noted. Historical research was prepared by Nicholas Jackson. John Oultram Heritage & Design was established in 1998 and is on the NSW Heritage Office list of heritage consultants. 1.6 PRE DA CONSULTATION The development has been discussed with Council’s planning department partly in regard to the heritage significance of the property. The property was the subject of a heritage assessment prepared by this office in May 2014 that concluded that the original house on the property had been very heavily altered and extended and that the remnant section of the house was not of heritage significance due to its limited intactness. Council indicated that its retention was preferred. The current proposals retain the original house and its later extensions dating from its conversion to aged care and the proposal is for development to the rear and side of the building on the three lots to the south identified above. JOHN OULTRAM HERITAGE & DESIGN 3 LARK ELLEN NURSING HOME, SUTHERLAND HERITAGE IMPACT STATEMENT ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 2.0 HISTORICAL SUMMARY 2.1 SUMMARY The property is located within part of Holt's Sutherland township (Deposited plan 802) that was subdivided and released for sale in 1882. The allotment and surrounding area did not sell until 1918 when it was purchased by the local real estate agent Arthur Cooper. Cooper re-subdivided in Deposited Plan 9306. The former dwelling was erected in 1929 for George Malcolm Greenwell (1873-1938). The building has been attributed to Greenwell's cousin, architect Carlyle Greenwell (1884-1961). In later years the house was named Laanecorri (or Laonecourie). The house would seem to have been converted in 1965 to a convalescent home named Lark Ellen Hospital. 2.2 HOLT ESTATE While Sutherland Shire has the distinction of being the birthplace of Australia because of the land of Captain Cook on the southern shore of Botany Bay in April 1770 permanent non-indigenous settlement commenced in the last decades of the nineteenth century. For most of the nineteenth century the area we consider as Sutherland Shire was in the ownership of a handful of people. The most numerous of these pioneers were the Connell/Laycock family who made a living running horses and cattle. In August 1861 the family sold their properties to Thomas Holt (1811-1888) who subsequently went on to purchase most of the remaining un-alienated crown land; most of the area of present day Sutherland township being sold to him in December 1862 by a land sale of 61 acres. The enterprising Holt attempted to run sheep, but found a little more success in timber and cattle, and he dabbled in oyster farming. Holt’s principal residence was The Warren (now demolished), overlooking Cooks River at present day Marrickville, but at Gwawley Bay he built Sutherland House (now demolished) in the late 1870s. Holt, who had migrated to New South Wales in 1842, returned to England in 1881 where he died in 1888. On leaving the colony in 1881, Holt leased his Sutherland estate, then comprising 12,000 acres between Botany Bay and Port Hacking, to the newly formed Holt-Sutherland Estate Land Co. 2.3 SUTHERLAND TOWNSHIP With the development of Sutherland township the impetus for closer settlement was the building of the government railway line connecting Sydney with the Illawarra region in 1885. The railway station at Sutherland, which was officially opened in December 1885, was sited within a pocket of land outside Holt’s and within land owned by Samuel William Gray, the local MLA prior to 1880. The area immediately around the station, bounded by Linden Street, The Grand Parade, Eton Street and Park Street, was subdivided and sold with freehold title from January 1885 by the Intercolonial Investment Land and Building Company, which had purchased the land from Gray. For the first twenty years following its foundation Sutherland township was a very sparsely populated settlement. Local government did not arrive until 1906 when it was forced on the local populace by the Shire Act of 1906 that brought the bulk of the rural towns and districts in the state into line with the suburban municipalities. At the time of incorporation Sutherland township had 90 houses and about ten businesses. JOHN OULTRAM HERITAGE & DESIGN 4 LARK ELLEN NURSING HOME, SUTHERLAND HERITAGE IMPACT STATEMENT ___________________________________________________________________________________________ It has been stated that the earliest developments in Sutherland township occurred on the western side of the railway line adjacent to Woronora Cemetery (opened in 1895), but from the 1900s the focus of activity had shifted to the east side.1 Here, along the Princess Highway, a number of commercial premises were established inclusive of Boyle’s Railway Hotel. The local shire erected their offices in Eton Street in 1915 (demolished in 1965). The public school opened in 1887 on the site fronting Eton Street. While the Catholics opened their first church in the area west of the railway line in 1891, they relocated to Belmont Street and erected St Patrick’s Church in 1928. The Anglicans had decided on the east side from the beginning and had opened St John’s Church in 1894 in Boyle Street and relocated it to Belmont Street in 1932 (site purchased in 1929). The Methodists erected their first chapel in Flora Street in 1905. Figure 2.1 The Holt township of Sutherland (Deposited Plan 802). Waterford Road changed to Jannali Avenue in 1930 Source: State Library of New South Wales (Sydney Suburbs Subdivision S18-5) 1 Toohey, Casimir (comp.), Sutherland Saga, privately printed, 1988, p.1 JOHN OULTRAM HERITAGE & DESIGN 5 LARK ELLEN NURSING HOME, SUTHERLAND HERITAGE IMPACT STATEMENT ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 2.4 LAANECORRIE, 133 JANNALI AVENUE The property is located within part of Holt's Sutherland township (Deposited plan 802) that was subdivided and released for sale in 1882. It that subdivision the property was within Lot 12 of Section 29. The allotment and surrounding area did not sell until 1918 when it was purchased by the local real estate agent Arthur Cooper.2 Cooper re-subdivided in Deposited Plan 9306. Figure 2.2 Cooper’ re-subdivision of his landholding dated 1918 The aged care centre site is edged in red with the three house sites edged in blue. Note that all of the surrounding street names have since been changed Source: Land and Property Information DP 9306 2 Torrens Certificate of Title Vol. 2867 Fol.165 JOHN OULTRAM HERITAGE & DESIGN 6 LARK ELLEN NURSING HOME, SUTHERLAND HERITAGE IMPACT STATEMENT ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Over the following three decades the allotments of the property (Lots 24, 25 & 28) of Cooper's subdivision changed ownership frequently with no apparent development resulting. Between May and July 1928 George Malcolm Greenwell bought the three allotments to form the existing property.3 These three allotments have never been consolidated into the one title. The existing inter-war building at the property was built for George Malcolm Greenwell in 1929. The probable architect was Greenwell's cousin, Carlyle Greenwell, who accepted the tender of AP Pringle in July 1929 for the erection of a residence at Sutherland.4 George Malcolm Greenwell (1873-1938) was the son of George Smith Greenwell (1843-1913) who had come to Australia with his